The DX service station in Miller, SD was more than just a place to get gas
and oil. It was a wonderful hangout for teenage boys. It was at a time when, if
you pulled your car in for gas, you got service. A man or boy washed your windshield,
checked your tires and oil, and even looked at your fan belt in hopes
that you would be the Gates Belt Mystery Man who gave an attendant money if he
found a worn belt.

The station was located across from the school. The
candy counter was a twenty-foot sugar-filled dentist's nightmare, with shelves
of gut-clutcher bars, gum and suckers. The Red Hots were a favorite and almost
undetectable, unless the teacher looked in your mouth, and then the red tongue
was a dead give away. The station was the first stop on the way to school, and
Planter's peanuts in a bottle of orange pop may have been breakfast for more
then one lad, while a Salted Nut Roll took care of dessert at lunch time.

Several of my friends worked at the station so I may have stopped morning,
noon and night. These were the days before tubeless tires, so there was a steady
stream of flat tires coming through the door. My friends would spend a lot
of time at the water tank blowing up tubes and using soap to detect leaks before
putting a vulcanized patch on them.

At night, when business slowed
down, we would sit around the candy counter playing cards on the counter top
or buying chances on the punchboard, the gambling device of the day. We also
read the little dirty comic books depicting Dagwood and Blondie doing things their
writer didn't have in mind for them. All in all it was almost as great a place
as the pool hall.

The station's single toilet also served as a storeroom
for empty cases of pop bottles and oil filters. One regular visitor was
an old man who used the toilet every morning. The workers dreaded his stop because
he usually smelled the place up so bad. One of the rascals decided to get
even and ran bare wires to the toilet seat and plugged it in to a 110 volt receptacle.
The old fellow was only in there a short time before the pop cases and
bottles were flying all over. When he came out he said, "You young boys
liked to almost killed me, but I probably won't have to go again for a week".